Was bringing daughter home from a sleepover when we came upon a flatbed truck with a Grand Cherokee on the bed and an old Impreza wagon on the hook and on its rear wheels. She asked me why the Subie's front wheels were spinning and I told her that the Subie should be on the bed, the Grand Cherokee on the hook, and that Bad ThingsTM were about to happen. Not more than a mile down the road I started smelling burning tranny and about a quarter mile after that there was a complete smoke show, squealing (locked) tires, and a fresh puddle on the road. Hope he wasn't planning on selling that Subie for anything other than suspension & body parts. With the front diff integrated into the tranny, my guess is that the entire driveline is toast.

Idiot probably thought he was towing a FWD car.

Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream straight from the carton how she's doing.

nVidia video drivers FAIL, click for more infoDisclaimer: All answers and suggestions are provided by an enthusiastic amateur and are therefore without warranty either explicit or implicit. Basically you use my suggestions at your own risk.

If the starter solenoid on the starter motor itself is clicking and not turning the engine over then either the starter motor or the wiring between the starter motor and the battery or battery and chassis is borked. I suppose the engine could be seized but that is very unlikely.

Commonest one is the starter solenoid is sticky and a bit of percussive maintenance may get it to fire up. Given new battery it may be that the connections are not good (someone didn't put them back on properly), this would also explain the key fob problem. I would first check over the connections I mentioned looking for loose ones and probe them with a meter looking for volts across the connection whilst someone else turns the key.

Why do people buy laptops places other than craigslist? I got a macbook air a few months ago for $300, Apple fixed it for free, and now I'm selling it for $700 because I found a Zenbook Prime for $400. That's not even close to retail! I know that that's not typical, but it still seems like a terrific return for the time invested.

Around here, most laptops are being sold at, like, half again more than they should be. Look at a laptop on my local CL then go look up a similarly-specced system on eBay, and eBay wins every time. No wonder nothing around here sells.

Other electronics are the same way. For example, right now there's a carrier-unlocked iPhone 4 listed for $375 and a Galaxy Nexus GSM at $325. Or a 4GB Xbox (current revision) with a bunch of old sports games (Madden 08 for example) for $200 - minus the sports games that's actually retail price for new. Seriously stupid.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

Because of the hassle of having to meet up with people at odd times and places, and place trust strangers who assure you the unit is either "lightly used," or "broken but only to the degree of 'x'," or "not stolen." There are decent deals to be had, but there are always tradeoffs in getting them. When I was under-employed for a few years I was able to spend a lot of time trolling CL and eBay and then strategizing how to best obtain an item, and at what price, based on my estimation of whether I could use it for my own projects or repair/recondition it for resale. Given my current employment, I don't have the time for that, and it can actually be cheaper to buy something new, and have a place to return it if it breaks or doesn't perform as advertised.

Great. Now ESPN has gone to a Facebook-only comment policy. It'll be below absolute zero before I consign my name to that wretched hive of scum and villainly, so so much for commenting on ESPN articles.

Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream straight from the carton how she's doing.